


In Safe Hands

by bigsunglasses



Category: Leverage
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 03:53:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7669090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigsunglasses/pseuds/bigsunglasses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hardison's hands get injured on a job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Safe Hands

**Author's Note:**

> song_of_staying beta'd this. Thank you!

"It's okay," says Parker. Her voice shakes wildly. "It's going to be okay. Alec, say something. Please say something to me."

He sprawls across her lap, eyes shut. He doesn't speak, but there are tears squeezing beneath his lashes, and blood oozing steadily through her fingers, so he's definitely still alive.

"I'm on my way," says Eliot in the earpieces. His gruff voice has never sounded so reassuring, even though his breathing's quick: he must be racing. "Keep pressure on the wounds, Parker."

"I know. Yes. I am." Her hands are soaked in Alec's blood. "Why won't he answer me?"

"Parker, I'm coming. I'll be there soon."

The darkness of the corridor crowds against her back. One man in her ear, running, and another in her lap, wounded. She's so frightened. The old instincts are there in the darkness, always finding their way in when she’s weakest, leaning on her shoulders like old friends and whispering _run away, run away, don't get hurt._

"No," she mutters. "Alec, I'm staying." She looks at his hands, raw slashed meat beneath her own, and wants to run him away from _his_ hurt. She'd take a thousand years of pain to spare him one. He is hers and she should have protected him better, should have kept him safe - 

Quick heavy footsteps announce Eliot and a jerking circle of torchlight, much brighter than the light on her cellphone. His eyes run over them briefly - " _Dammit_ ," he says, crouching and pulling a handful of bandages from his pocket. "He’s not in danger, but we need to get him to a hospital."

“You do the bandages, my hands are slippery.” She cradles Alec’s head instead, while Eliot takes up one long battered hand … his breath sucks in, but he doesn’t say a thing, and wraps it up neatly. Alec whimpers, and turns his head into Parker’s grip. “We’ve got you,” she says. “There, there.”

Eliot reaches for the other hand just as someone steps out from the darkness. Same direction Eliot had come. The goon’s staggering and bleeding but looks determined. “Eliot!” Parker says, not letting go of Alec, and just jerking her head in the right direction.

“Oh, for - “ Eliot stands, radiating fury. “I’m trying to take care of my man here! Why couldn’t you stay down the first time, huh?” He kicks the guy’s groin and slams his head against the wall.

“Cruuuuunch,” says Parker, filling with pride. “Good job, Eliot. Hear that, Alec? It’s all gonna be okay.” 

He still says nothing, but at least he’s breathing, at least he’s crying in a soundless way, at least he’s not dead.

**

“But he’s actually _staying_ in bed,” Parker whispers over the kitchen island.

Eliot plucks the last bit of meat from the roast chicken and then begins breaking the carcass up into the crockpot. Snap, rip, crack. It feels good to do this – tidy physical work, towards a good end. Really he wants to go back to BrexiCorp and destroy the CEO and his secret torture fetish all over again. _It should have been me. When jobs go wrong, I should be the one who gets hurt. I can take it._

“Bedrest is what the doctor ordered, Parker. And dammit, stand back, you’ll get your hair in the stock again.”

“I still think it was yours.” She hops up to sit near the hob, looking into the bubbling liquid. “Smells good.”

“It’ll be good for Hardison.”

“Yes,” agrees Parker, somewhat dubiously. “But why did he let you feed him porridge this morning? With those seeds, and _fruit_? Why didn’t he ask for Sugar-Os?”

“He’s still caught up in remembering, maybe. What that bastard did to him.” Eliot wasn’t even there and he’s caught up in thinking about it, the knife flashing across Hardison’s beautiful, clever hands. He shudders and offers Parker the wishbone. They snap it and she wins.

“I wish for him to be well,” says Parker, and throws her piece of the wishbone into the pot.

Eliot slams the lid on the stock and looks towards the bedroom door. Fractured ribs, broken foot, and hands mutilated by knife. 

Suddenly he knows that it isn’t the inflicting of the injuries that haunts Hardison the most.

“Parker, the doctor told him his hands would heal. With time and physical therapy. Maybe he’s too upset to believe her.”

“Oh,” said Parker, slithering off the island again. “That makes sense. I’ll go tell him he’s wrong.”

“Knock yourself out,” says Eliot, and pulls two bubbling golden apple pies out of the oven. He has a slice with melting ice-cream awaiting her ten minutes later when she comes out of the bedroom, brows pinched.

“New recipe?” she asks.

“Yep.” He checks the stock, and then starts on the pastry for croissants, adding more sugar than his favourite recipe, jotting “lots of butter” on the shopping list on the fridge. With some of last summer’s raspberry jam, this’ll be a good sweet breakfast for tomorrow … And he should get more eggs, too, and cinnamon, for French toast. 

“He didn’t believe me, either,” says Parker, on her third slice. “So I got Nana on the phone, and told her what to say, and – Eliot, he _hung up on her_.”

**

 _I love you, boy, but don’t hang up on me again,_ says Nana’s email. Alec’s just able to tap around his phone to read it. He almost didn’t. The notification on the lockscreen, that an email has come into that one account he keeps specially for Nana to use, had made him curl up with a hot unfocused shame. And the sheer pain of using his pinky finger to open it … shit. The text blurred, and he blinked a few times. _That nice girl says you’ll get better if you work at it, and I know that nice young man will be feeding you right. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Some people have much worse. I want you nice and healthy again for Christmas so you can fix my laptop, I expect it’ll have broken again by then._

He rolls over in his pillows, wincing a bit out of habit, though the bandages are off his ribs now. Nana’s laptop, what a piece of shit, she’d got cheated by that salesman, but she was so proud of it.

Eliot appears with a tray of orange juice (actual oranges, not just juice that’s a nice orange colour) and stacks of pancakes. “The therapist is coming today,” he says.

“I know, I know.”

Eliot’s knife whisks through the pancakes. He pours a hefty slug of golden syrup all over the stack, loads up a fork, and sticks it at Alec’s mouth. “New recipe. What do you think?”

Alec thinks that he wants to eat all by himself. Under the sheets he tries to make a fist. _Fuck fuck fuck._ What the fuck is he meant to do without his hands? That guy couldn’t have picked a better place to hurt him … 

“Hands where I can see ‘em,” says Eliot. “I’m serious, man. The doc said the muscles were damaged, not destroyed: don’t do shit with them until the therapist says so!”

“I’ve got eight different kinds of voice-to-text software to try.” Parker slides around the bedroom door, all in black. “What?” she adds, all indignation, when Eliot frowns. “I’ll put back the ones he doesn’t want!”

“I don’t want any of them!” 

Parker looks like she’s been slapped. 

Alec opens and shuts his mouth a few times, trying to find an apology that doesn’t invalidate his point of view. Eliot takes advantage of this and gets a mouthful of warm sweet pancake into Alec’s mouth. 

It does taste good. He has to admit that.

“Ooh, give me some too,” says Parker, and then chews with a blissful expression. “You’ve finally got them sweet enough! Well done, Eliot!” She kisses his cheek.

“First and last time,” mutters Eliot, but he’s smiling a bit under the scowl, Alec can tell. 

God, he loves them both so much. “Parker, I’m sorry. I just – I don’t wanna have to use that stuff even for a _day_ , you know?”

“Yeah,” she says, curling up beside him. “But it’s going to be a couple of months, there’s no way around that, and I know this software won’t be the same, but it’s better than nothing.” She strokes one of his fingers gently. “You know typing bores me and as for Mr Punchy here - ” She mimes tapping with two fingers, then laughs.

“I’m the one who feeds you, remember,” grumbles Mr Punchy.

She does have a point. Alec accepts another delivery of pancake, mostly to postpone a response. OK, so what if he used this software? It’d be really slow. It probably wouldn’t understand if he tried to code with it, it probably was meant just for proper words. (Maybe he could make it better?) But he’d be able to do emails and google and social media, and could spend some time maybe putting together new cover stories. Parker coped when she had that ACL injury, not the same as a hand injury, but she did manage … 

“Time to get you dressed,” says Eliot, and Alec realises he’s inadvertently been fed the whole stack of pancakes. Talk about lost in thought. 

He loves them both. But he still hates that they have to dress him like a doll. Usually when they’re messing with his boxers it’s sexy. He wants to touch Parker’s cheek and Eliot’s jaw, but can’t, so the energy lies like lead in his arm, weighing, flattening.

They’ve got a therapist to come to the apartment. She has little yellow foam balls to squeeze, among other things, and Alec can’t stop them rolling out of his hand. 

She smiles, though, at the end when she’s packing up to go. “I’ll tell you what, it’s nice to see you have people looking out for you. Hands can be such an upsetting injury, but it really helps if loved ones can keep your spirits up.”

Alec swallows. Parker and Eliot have tactfully arrayed themselves just out earshot – well, Eliot had tactfully dragged Parker out of earshot, anyway. He says to the therapist, “But my hands are going to heal, right?” His voice cracks. Shit.

“Yes,” she says. There’s compassion in her eyes. “It’ll take a few months, but they will. And faster, if you work at it.”

After she’s gone, Alec lets his lovers put him to bed. He hates that he’s so tired already. But as he watches Parker’s hands take off his shoes and Eliot’s hands undo his shirt, he thinks: _at least it wasn’t them_. Nobody could steal in proxy for Parker, no one could cook in proxy for Eliot. 

He shuts his eyes. 

“After my nap, I’ll try those softwares, Parker,” he says.

Someone kisses his nose. Someone strokes his brow.

A little later, he thinks: _I’ll take them to Nana’s for Christmas._

On the edge of sleep, he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the prompt "lacerations/knife wounds" for my hurt/comfort bingo card (http://hc_bingo.livejournal.com/).


End file.
